Treasures: Crazy What You Find When You Clean The Office

Tina Dale has been the features editor for the Times Record since March 2001. She previously was a beat reporter for several years, covering Crawford County, agribusiness, health, education and Sebastian County courts. She has won awards for feature story, news and business coverage and humor column. Previously, she was an award-winning news producer for Channel 40/29 KHBS and a reporter for the Amarillo Globe News in Amarillo, Texas. Tina was named a Leading Lady by the Junior League of Fort Smith for 2007. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism and English from the Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, and a master's degree in professional writing from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Okla. She originally is from Wheeler, Texas.

I went through my filing cabinet and threw out old files I’m not even certain why were there.

I cleaned out my overhead cabinets and tossed at least a dozen small toys my children played with back when they were young enough to play with toys when they had to stay a couple of hours at the office.

I organized my desk drawers, throwing away random slips of paper with messages that I no longer needed and old ketchup packets.

I organized and cleaned and sorted.

I worked very hard.

And today as I sit back and look and around my office, I see an awful mess.

I guess I should have started the cleaning process a little sooner because obviously I still have a ways to go.

Sure, my files are very up-to-date and only include the files I need or actually might need sometime in the future.

The children’s toys are gone or at least mostly gone. The crayons, coloring books and wooden top I kept just in case a child visited the office and needed to be entertained are now neatly stored in a plastic box.

My desk drawers are meticulously organized.

But no one can see any of that.

The top of my desk looks like the site of a natural disaster; the counter behind my desk is filled with stacks I need to file, donate or discard; and there are more things stacked on the floor under the counter.

I might have progressed further in my cleaning attempts if I hadn’t gotten so distracted with so many of the items I found.

I know I liked to be prepared, so I wasn’t too surprised to find the screwdriver with interchangeable heads in my desk. I vaguely remember buying it some years ago. I, however, can not explain the not one, but two tape measures I found in the same drawer. I don’t really know what I thought I was going to need those for while writing and editing.

I understand the boxes of pens in every type and color. I have a thing about pens. When I find ones I like on sale, I buy them. If I find colors of pens I think are pretty, I buy them. I put them in my desk. But when most of my work is done on the computer, it takes a very long time to go through a pen.

I do not understand the 16 cap erasers or the two large pink erasers. I have been using the same pencil for about two years now. It has a cap eraser on it, but it’s the same one I put on when I started using the pencil. I think somewhere on this desk is another pencil with another eraser. Maybe I’ll find that to add to my collection next week.

I knew I would need to toss some ketchup packets when I cleaned out my bottom desk drawer. If I ever have extras, I put them in there in case I or someone else needs one. But I was surprised to find tea bags, hot chocolate packets, soup packs and a Fiber Plus bar. I didn’t need to be skipping lunch after all.

I found a partial roll of wrapping paper, two gift bags and three partial packages of tissue paper. If someone at work needs to wrap a gift, I’m your girl.

But the things that caught my attention the most, that completely distracted me from my task and made my cleaning frenzy have to stretch to a second week, were all located on the bulletin board over the counter behind my desk.

For years, I’ve pinned things there as I’ve seen fit — photos, cards, drawings. I guess I don’t look at them much after I pin them. So this week, I went through each and every one to see what I needed to throw out, what I needed to put away and what I needed to keep proudly displayed.

There was a photo of me interviewing someone while balancing my daughter, then not quite 1, on my hip. There was a note from my daughter’s teacher on her first day of preschool when she was 3. There were construction paper replicas of her little hands held together with a piece of yard and a poem. There was a drawing she made of our dog, herself and me when she was 5.

There was a photo of my son gripping a football tightly and grinning when he barely had teeth to grin. There was a piece of paper with crayon scribbles when he was learning to write his name. There was a yellow sticky note that simply proclaimed it (or whatever it had once been attached) belonged to my son.

There were funny cards from a friend I haven’t seen in years, but who always knows just when I need to receive a funny card.

There were postcards from friends visiting wonderful places.

There was an entire bulletin board of things I am so happy I didn’t throw away.